8 Awesome Alternatives to Mail.App on Your Mac

One of the best things about your Mac is that it comes pre-loaded with tons of software goodness, right out of the box. Apps like Mail, Preview, iCal, and the iLife suite are all very functional, but sometimes they lack a little piece of extra functionality that more in-depth users need. That’s where more “pro” apps like Aperture, Adobe Reader and Photoshop come in.

Mail.app is not excluded from this situation, as it has had it’s reported share of problems and limitations. Even though most are not very significant, over time they can become annoying and sometimes switching to another application is the best solution. If you’ve had any problems with Mail.app, or if you have just grown tired of it, you should check out our eight alternatives below!

Postbox is the newest, and most popular addition to mail applications. With its simple interface, easy setup process, RSS compatibility, Growl, Social Networking and OS X integration, it is definitely a contender for replacing Mail.app. If you’re looking for a simple and user-friendly, yet fully-featured alternative to Mail.app, this is it.

With Postbox 2 coming, there’s just more to expect from this great piece of software. Although it is expensive, Postbox will do anything you want it to do, and once you try it you probably won’t want to go back to any other mail client.

Mailplane is a Gmail-only app, touted as “Gmail on your desktop”, and that’s exactly what it is. Basically, it’s a Gmail window, but being displayed in an app with some extra handy buttons added. Multiple accounts are supported, so is Growl; however, no mail accounts are supported other than Gmail, and it’s not anything new, it doesn’t bring any extra functionality to Gmail, other than the fact that it is actually running in a separate application and that could be convenient for some people.

It also adds a button to your menu bar where you can quickly see info. You could look at Mailplane as a convenient way of managing your Gmail account with the same lovely interface that Google has spoiled us with, but in a separate window. Or you could see it as Gmail with a price tag.

Notify is a very basic mail application – simple, but brilliant. It functions through the menu bar; if you click the Notify icon you will see a drop-down window with a few buttons where you can quickly check your new mails and even send a brief message (with no formatting or attachments, though).

On the downside, it only supports IMAP accounts, and it’s a bit lacklustre for some people. For example, if you want to see images or details about an email, it has to pull up your account in a browser. If you want a fast, simple way to check your mail and/or write brief replies from your menu bar I’d recommend this, but it’s in no way a replacement to a full-featured mail client like Mail.app.

Thunderbird is a mail client developed by the people who made the most successful browser to date: Mozilla Firefox. And its exactly what you’d expect from them: solid, functional, open-source, and full of fun and productive add-ons. It’s not exactly great looking, and it feels heavy and even a bit slow (when pulling data from your accounts), but it does exactly what Mail.app does, even RSS and tabbed browsing.

If you are a fan of Firefox and the add-ons that made it so popular, then you should try this, since it’s open source and it has a very robust library of add-ons. It is also one of the only free options that we are reviewing, and probably the best one. Thunderbird is definitely a solid replacement to Mail.app.

GyazMail is seemingly very simple, but in reality it’s not that user friendly. There isn’t any setup assistant like with the other apps, and to set up your accounts you need to provide information that can be confusing for a regular user without much technical knowledge, such as the incoming and outgoing server of your accounts.

I had heard a lot of buzz about this app but I really don’t see why, there’s not much to it. It seems dated, not really good looking and it’s far from feature-packed (at least not when compared to more complete clients like Postbox or Thunderbird).

Although it’s already on its way out and we’ll be getting Outlook for Mac with the release of Office for Mac ’11, I had to put this, as it is the go-to for people that switched from Windows and are looking to replace Outlook in their new computer. Entourage comes with the Office for Mac bundle and, of course, it has full integration with the other Office apps.

It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Microsoft product; lots of buttons, features and functionality, but it also comes with a learning curve and confusion when you start using it.

It’s far from simple, but it does plenty and it does it well, I guess that’s enough for some people. If you are used to Outlook, or other Windows applications, you’ll most likely feel at home with this app, but you may as well just wait for Office for Mac ’11 to be released in a few months.

Like GyazMail, MailForge also is a bit complicated in account set up, even though it has a setup assistant. What makes this app special is that it actually lets you chose between a “Classic” or “Unified” inbox, the former being a view with all your accounts separated, and the latter being just one inbox where you see all the emails from every account. It’s a nice touch, but the application itself is very reminiscent of GyazMail – perhaps a prettier, more polished version.

It’s an acceptable alternative, it’s simple and looks good. The fact that MailForge lets you chose your view is a pleasant addition, but aside from that it brings nothing new.

MailCue is very similar to Notify – it mainly runs in the menu bar, although unlike Notify, MailCue’s main window is not the drop-down one that is displayed in the menu bar. Another thing that it shares with Notify is that it only supports IMAP mail clients, so you can’t check your Hotmail or other POP3 accounts here.

It’s actually very nice in it’s design and proved to be easy to use and setup. However, it does need to pull an extra window in order for you to be able to read your new mail, as the drop-down window can only display the number of new emails. It’s close to the price of Notify, so if you are looking for a fast menu bar alternative to Mail.app, it comes down to how you’d like your app; very simple (Notify), or just simple (MailCue).

When I got my first Mac stolen, with all the Mail.app info (along with the other tons of information I had in it) easily accessible to anyone, I realized how inconvenient and unsafe it is to use applications that store old mails and that don’t require a password to access them, such as Mail.app.

When I got my new Mac, one of the first things I did (other than change all my passwords from any site, ever) was redirect all my Hotmail, Yahoo! and other mail accounts to my main Gmail account. Then, I set up labels (with conditions) that indicate what account a certain mail came from.

That way, I only have to log in into one account and I can see all my mails neatly separated into different labels, and I can even access all my mails with one login from different computers. It’s very, very convenient and easy to set up, and I would highly recommend this, coupled with a browser notifier add-on.

Conclusion

There are a huge range of Mail applications for Mac OS, and most of them would be a good alternative to Mail.app. It really comes down to what your needs are, and what you are looking for in a mail client. If you are a business man, or if you are used to Windows applications, you might be better off using Entourage. If you are looking for something simple and fast, you could do with Notify or MailCue. If you are a Gmail user, Mailplane is for you. And if you are simply looking for a nice, functional full-featured client, try Postbox and Thunderbird.

Price also plays a part here. A mail client is something that you will most likely use everyday, but if you make the wrong purchase you might have to spend more money on another app. That’s why you should first try a free trial for a few days, or even a free app like Thunderbird, Gyazmail or Mailforge.

Overall, I’d declare Postbox as the winner with its simple UI and feature set that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s not everyday that you fork out $40 for an application, but Postbox is definitely worth every cent.

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http://log.ttanh.com tuan anh tran

I bought Postbox awhile ago and it’s a well money spent

Christopher Robertson

I actually just invested in Postbox 2.0 yesterday, and it’s probably the wisest thing anyone in the social crowd could do. Furthermore, it makes me wonder when the generic turkeys will alter to become social-networking friendly?! (Obviously those being Mail.app and Outlook etc.)

Dave Woodwater

I’ve been thinking about getting Postbox 2.0…

Does it support Outlook server?

syphadius

there is also the new outlook now that is very useful and full featured

http://www.fahmid.com Brandlax

I use Notify…it rocks!

marcel

hi there appstorm,
ive got one question for the gmail as overall inbox
solution. there is one major minus you didnt mentioned.

if i redirect all my mail from every account i have (e.g.
3 in my situation), i do not have the possibility to login
in gmail and answer a mail which was sent to maybe[email protected], because i dont want to
answer from [email protected] .

is there any solution you maybe forgot to say or is this
just the disadvantage you have?

thanks alot :)

http://twitter.com/orderofout/ Jason Hanrahan

You can setup the outgoing mail server for all your incoming emails. Then when you compose a message in gmail, select the account (yahoo, hotmail, etc) you want to send it from and your good to go.

http://thestrangulation.wordpress.com Jorge Rodriguez

Yes, go to Settings/Accounts and Import and click “Send mail from another address”. Type your account and Gmail will send an email to that account in order to verify it. When you verify it you’ll be able to send messages from that account on Gmail.

marcel

okay. i got that one. this is really nice.
but now, if im using mail.app and im having
my unified gmail inbox, and i want to send
from another mail adress it doesnt work.

i have even set up the outgoing servers in mail.app,
but if i use them to send the mail, the message
will appear to be from the gmail adress.

Topy

nice review! I still love and use everyday the mac mail app, it does everything i need for me, at least. But anyway, this is good to have an alternative.

Bye, and keep the blog going, I’ve seen some stupid comments from somebody who thinks u re luck of issues to talk. Fuck him, I’ve read this blog BEFORE I got a mac and learned a lot and I’m still learning. Thanks so much

kisses from Argentina

Bruno

So Mailplane is a “tweaked” SSB with Gmail on it? And it’s 25 bucks!? That’s beyond overpriced.

http://www.bluecreststudios.com Matthew R. Miller

Thank you for including MailCue in your review. Version 2.0 is coming out soon, which will for sure take care of some of the shortness you have pointed out with MailCue.

http://twitter.com/chrisbloom7 Chris B

The Mailplane app sounds like a trumped-up Fluid app. I’ve been using Fluid since I first got my MBP a year ago to run various web pages as if they were desktop applications. (Fluid is technically known as a site-specific browser.) At the moment I have no less than 9 Fluid apps in my Doc: 1 for each of the Google apps (gmail, docs, calendar, reader), Netflix, Hulu, StackExchange, and 1 each for my company’s web mail client and ticketing systems.

The most disappointing thing out of the rest of the list though is that the only client that supports Exchange Server 2003 is Entourage, and that’s about to be sunset for Outlook for Mac 2011, which I’ve read will NOT support Exchange 2003… Guess I’m stuck with web mail for another couple years until my company decides to upgrade our Exchange Server

MacMan

Thew new Outlook for Mac 2011 blows all these away. I used the beta and TRUST ME, it is light years beyond what any of these can do and corrects some of the issues that plauged Entourage. Full Exchange support, a nice Mac feel, snappy response…You don’t need to look anywhere else than Outlook

I’ve been using POstBox 1 for about a month now, after a hard drive failure cost me all my mail tags. I like the search and the ability to tag messages w/o third party plugins. Dislike the cluttered feel and cludginess of some of the commands. Downloading 2 now.

Opened Outlook 11 since I have Office 11 beta already installed but I can’t see myself ever getting used to that interface.

Notify works as a great add-on to Mail and Postbox.

Eric

Unfortunately, none of these apps as the integration of Mail.app with the OS. And though its Applescript support is a bit buggy (can’t select a signature for a new email) it is the best overall mail app on OS X – and it’s free.

http://loneplacebo.com Tony

I never liked the idea of having all of my emails downloaded and saved to my computer’s hard drive. What happens if it is stolen? I’d rather keep them online using Gmail.

stan the man

I am new to mac , dont quite like apple mail. but like to keep all my email in my gmail account. I have another email accounts.which is iinet . i like to recvd mails from iinet account into gmail account.so when i reply thru gmail .I like the reply to show as iinet account.
Is that possible and how Thanks.

http://www.mikekey.com Mike Key

I’m actually a recent convert from Windows to Mac with the purchase of a 15inch Macbook Pro. My main development system for most of all my work is still a Windows box. I switched to Google Apps a year ago, and I’m very found of the Google Apps for windows, which basically sets up Chrome windows. And the Google notifier. Which is a little app for windows that you pin to the task bar and lets you know when you have new mail.

When I got my Mac, I was a little disappointed at how iMail handles Gmail. What’s the point I thought. But I wanted a growl notification or a dock notification, and Fluid doesn’t do this. Another disappointment. I read about Mailplane in another post on this site, and gave it a whirl.

It might be Gmail with a price tag, but I’ve gotten very used to the interface. It’s convenient and works well. Plus there is a workaround to use Google Apps Offline with Mailplane. A double plus.

All in all, if you use Gmail or Google Apps, and you want dock notifications and growl notifications, I personally think Mailplane is worth it. They offer a 30 day trail, which I used before coming to this decision.

http://codealamode.net Tessa

Until a free app integrates gmail’s drag-and-drop attachments, I’m sticking with browser email. I hate the slowness and occasional glitchy-ness of gmail, but I send a lot of attachments.
Notify is awesome for growl/audio notifications. I have the paid version, but I rarely use the pro features.

Instead of using Mailplane, try using an SSB (fluid or prism) for gmail.

http://www.tyssendesign.com.au John Faulds

I use Opera for mail, RSS and web browsing.

MJ

I bought Postbox a couple of months ago and it’s worth it! Works great with gmail and they have nice features.

http://log.ttanh.com tuan anh tran

Now only if Postbox supports Exchange and as well as SpamSieve, it will be a true winner.
for those who til wanna stick with Mail.app, consider buying Rocketbox. it’s a turbo charge to Mail.app

Nic Fletcher

Interesting review, but you failed to actually review the standard mail.app in Mac OS X and it came across whenever you referred to it that it is just a basic app that doesn’t do much.

I confess to struggling a few years back when I switched from Windows (although I hated Entourage with a passion, and ran Outlook 2007 in Parallels). But when I finally made the switch to mail.app, I just can’t imagine using another client.

Unified mailboxes, or easily see separately, Rules. IMAP with Gmail is almost perfect. It allows you to chose which folders will sync as draft, trash, sent, & junk in IMAP (I have found no other client that does this other than iPhone client – which again is perfect). Perfect integration into the other OS X apps. Snappy execution. Fast and powerful search (makes Outlook look painful), etc.

The only downside of mail.app is the lack of vertical views in preview. But this is soon sorted with a free add-on called WideMail from Dane Harnett. This not only gives the outlook 3 vertical views (folders, items, preview), but also allows two lines with a preview of email (similar to Outlook). Together, this becomes my perfect mail app.

Finally, not sure how the new Outlook for Mac is architected, but many other apps (and old outlook and entourage) use huge singe file architecture. Which makes backups time-consuming, space consuming, and almost pointless. Since mail.app uses individual files for mail, backups are a cynch!

… and, if you’re a Time Machine fan like me, then you will see the backup and recovering of mail with mail.app is next to perfect.

If gmail is your main account then none of these solutions really work well. The problem is that all these programs try to cram google labels into the folder metaphor and so you always get at least two copies of every email – one in your all mail and one in your archive and inbox. If you are a heavy user of labels you often find that you have have a dozen copies of the emails on your harddrive.

Mailbrowser is an incredibly clever firefox addon that downloads all your gmail attachments (over a configurable long period of time) onto your harddrive. Among other things When you open a mail in gmail it displays in the sidebar all the attachments from that person and make their contents fully instantly searchable. It also makes versioning and resending documents very slick over the course of a conversation. It hard to explain how smooth and revolutionary this feels. Its sort of what Postbox tries to do, but much better. I handle lots of attachments every day over lots of conversations and mailbrowser is godsend.

Cloudmagic is also a firefox addon that indexes and then adds instant search to gmail and allows you to bring up a searched email and maintain an email or composition open in gmail. It makes gmail in firefox feel like a desktop client.

Both addons are freeware and the websites have excellent videos explaining how they work. The developers are super responsive in my experience and really friendly.

http://connorcrosby.me Connor Crosby

I use Google Notifiers which uses Growl to tell me when I get a new email.

Just a week ago, I switched over to Sparrow (www.sparrowmailapp.com), which is beta, and only works with Gmail right now, but WOW, it’s amazing.

Nathan Broyles

I just found Sparrow too. It is amazing!

http://www.jjude.biz Joseph

Recent convert to sparrow. And it works well for my minimal requirements. Good money spent

Zeshalta

Wavering between the Demon Outlook and Postbox 2 at the moment.

I tried Mailplane and it did just seem like an SSB … with ads. Certainly didn’t seem enough there for me to pay for it. I also tried Sparrow which has a beautiful interface.. but very slow scroll within the message pane which is a killer on a touch pad – there’s no up/down scroll arrows either so currently it’s a deal breaker. It may seem like a small feature, but viewing mail needs to be a smooth and relatively fast process. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next release though.

Outlook is nice – I like the way it handles “conversations” and it integrates well with Address Book, but as the above posters have said: No ical or google cal sync which is pretty major. Trying to keep Android and Mac synced is only really possible through Google. Hopefully there’s some sort of support for it in future. The interface design doesn’t exactly move me but I do like its “today” “Yesterday” “Last month” etc. groupings and from a purely aesthetic perspective, its inbuilt notifications.

I’m currently trialing Postbox. I had some issues last night trying to hook up a 2nd account. It took me about an hour before it would connect properly; highly frustrating but I can’t say whether it was the server or the application. The Lightening calendar addon is a nice feature – fairly close to ical and syncs up with google calendar very easily through a second addon. Interface wise, it’s close to Mail.app with a few optional columns. The popup “new mail” interface is very nice. I think where this app really shines is in its search features.

I may have a bit of a play around with Notifiy and MailCue which look potentially interesting.

Some good applications available but in the end it all comes down to personal choice.

tannerc

**disclaimer:, ive never once felt the need to post negativity online about apps/companies ive dealt wityh over my 12 year career in web technology-
But then again..i guess ive never felt like i was being dismissed- censored and then misrepresented without being able to defend my points.
Until my postbox exp,
when i came across postbox, last year, i was elated-.
the program had all the things i thought i was looking for in an email program:
add ons( like extensions in safari/firefox)
a beautiful look..
and upon some digging- a plan that seemed to be rooted in all things community minded ,open-source and user friendly-so i started to test it -while in beta-and then in August 2010, after careful deliberation and quite literally YEARS of searching for some email app peace-of-mind…I bought a liscence for postbox- believing i was investing in a likeminded developers app..
Unfortunetly: i was wrong.
postbox is a sham- shame:
While they def. have a good product in the making-their handling of customers is atrocious.
after owning postbox for one month, they upgraded the app… awesome right?
…not really- as they asked for another payment, if you wanted to keep the liscence ( bought less than 40 days prior)
so i emailed them- describing my frustration at the policy, but also letting them now i was also enjoying their product and would gladly pay for upgrade -after a reasonable amount of develop. and time… – this was met by an email from ceo Sherman Dickman, justifying paying them again so soon- written, in my opinon, in a very condescending tone-
similar complaints were made on the forums, run by postbox- by many customers…and here is where as a company, postbox-inc, erred:
rather than address the negative feedvback over thier policy ( not their product), postbox chose to censor, and delete ,at their disgression, customer accounts and feedback..this is disgraceful..and embarrassing.
please see :http://mikkel.hoegh.org/blog/2010/oct/8/postbox-upgrade-policy-censor-customer-complaints
this eloquent breakdown of the commentary and CEO Sherman Dickmans’, subjective and somewhat dishonest reasoning over why he is deleting users feedback…even deeming the feedback/ comments
“abusive”- which they were DEF. not

Thomas

The Postbox story seems to go on, insofar as they advertise for 2.0 features that were in 1.1 – ok, but didn’t work until 2 days ago 2.1 arrived…
And some advantages over Thunderbird are non-existent (yet or anymore).
Criticism / bug tracking isn’t really warmly welcome.

I’d go for Sparrow once the 1.1 update (support for all IMAP accounts, incl. MobileMe, instead of Gmail only for now) will be approved by Apple for inclusion in the Mac App Store. Maybe less feature-bloated than the other apps but definitely the most beautiful interface IMHO.

Tom Fallon

I loved Eudora. I still love Eudora. I do not like the Mac Address Book. What is closest to Eudora among the new mail software? I want only one mail program for simplicity and time.

Learn the difference between it’s and its. Implement them correctly in the posts you release to the world.
I am guessing you also need to learn about their, there, their, too, to, two, loose, lose, and a host of other words.
Good luck! English is a good language to understand.

Heather

Your most favorite is our least used one!

Everyone is craving about “Postbox” … what the buzz about this genetically misplaced piece of junk?

Even the “next to Postbox Junk”, Apple’s own “Mail” is still better. I had never tested any software that would fail already in trying to get a “SMTP” connection. (And I tested dozens)

So – NO! absolutely NO! I am not going to wast even another second trying to turn this waste into something … just “little” useful!

Baba

GyazMail is much better than it is given credit here. I’m a long-time Eudora user but now that Rosetta has been dropped in Lion I needed a new e-mail client. After trying all the current alternatives GyazMail won hands-down.

It’s correct that Gyazmail does not have a “wizard” like Mail. But I consider that to be its major feature. Unlike Mail, GyazMail does not get in the way when configuring multiple accounts. For example, Mail assumes that GMail accounts are always IMAP even when the user wants to configure a POP3 GMail account. The only workaround is to set-up a GMail account while offline but you won’t find this information in the Mail Help. The user has to figure this out, so many people won’t know how to circumvent Mail’s wizard.

Unlike Mail, setting up accounts manually is a logical process. You don’t have to input the account password in two locations, another Mail “feature” that isn’t explained in Mail Help.

To obtain features in Mail that so-called “power users” rely on requires spending over $50 to purchase the most popular Mail plugins. Most of the same features are built-in to GyazMail.

And don’t get me started about Mail’s tendency to “forget” account passwords…

GyazMail has a clean, modern interface and it handles HTML mail well. It can be customized in a variety of ways. And it integrates well with OS X, providing direct access to Apple’s Address Book.

The only downside that I have found is that GyazMail is not compatible with Exchange accounts.

GyazMail has been updated a number of time since the above review was written. I suggest that it deserves another look.

Zorzal

As far as I can tell, Exchange 2003 is NOT supported by any of the clients mentioned in this very nice thread. The threads (and valuable comments) made me hope for Postbox supporting it… Of course, this is a ‘minor’ question and thus is not addressed by their FAQ and forums, so I ended up downloading the trial, and having to install it just to find out.

But no, the “new account” wizard only allows selection between IMAP and POP. No “EXCHANGE’ option there either.

It strikes me that with such a heated competition for customer attention (Postbox has been quite to imitate every feature in Sparrow, for example), none of the vendors sees Exchange 2003 as a valuable feature (???) A quick survey would let them see that Exchange 2003 is still VERY prevalent in .NET infrastructures.

Does anyone know if perhaps there is a “structural” reason for this? Like something that SPECIFICALLY inhibits Exchange 2003 support in Lion and not in iOS? Such a bummer… EVERYONE I know who needs to access email from Exchange 2003 (My office is, of course, full of them), is forced to maintain a very demanding (in terms of resources and cost) stack of Parallels/VMWare, PLUS Office, plus the aggravation of running Windows, JUST to access their email. Like having to carry around a refrigerator just to cool down the soda you drink at the office…

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Freeman

I’m a klutzy, but lifelong Macnerd and don’t want to go through the horrendous (and believe me EVERY new app has been horrendous to d/L, and get running!) trauma of trying to ensure MAIL’s contents and settings move to a better app. I need to get rid of MAIL because it has consistently destroyed hours’ worth of work at the «brush» of a key, has the clumsiest Address Book ever foisted on the public, and NOW, totally unbidden, has started wrapping every new message in a shroud of OLD, often totally unrelated messages and I can’t shut that ««feature»» off! SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME! So-called MAIL «HELP» is totally useless.